Is Joost headed for the deadpool?

It’s been awhile since I wrote about Joost, but the sudden departure this week of the company’s chief technology officer — which started out amicably and then became a firing — made me want to take a look at the company again. Not that long ago, Joost was the flavour…

It’s been awhile since I wrote about Joost, but the sudden departure this week of the company’s chief technology officer — which started out amicably and then became a firing — made me want to take a look at the company again. Not that long ago, Joost was the flavour of the month: everyone wanted a beta invite, everyone was talking about how it could revolutionize video, and of course everyone wanted to talk about how Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom were going to completely disrupt the TV industry after disrupting both the online music business (with Kazaa) and the phone industry (with Skype).

And then what happened? A bunch of things. But mostly, at least as far as I’m concerned, the network failed to come up with enough compelling reasons to download and install the software, as I wrote here. There was some interesting programming, but not a huge amount. The app was cool enough to use and there were some interesting features — such as the ability to chat about a show while watching it — but nothing that was a must-have. Many of the users I spoke to said they eventually stopped using it and went back to watching TV on the web.

So what is really going on at Joost? I have no way of knowing, but when you have to fire your CTO, that doesn’t send a great message. Maybe it’s because of how Dirk-Willem van Gulik left, and how quickly he wound up going to work at BBC, I don’t know. But this commenter on the NewTeeVee post — who claims to be an insider at Joost — says that things are not going well: “The mood is very bad inside the company, money is running out fast, the cash burn is of course way way too high, and so there is a lot of nervousness. Honestly, I think they are dead.”

So is Joost headed for the deadpool? Mike Butcher at TechCrunch UK says he doesn’t think it will last the year. Apart from the news today that the network has added Star Trek to the service (which should have happened right after launch, let’s be honest), there hasn’t been much news out of Joost for months. That’s not usually a good sign.

Further reading:

NewTeeVee has some suggestions for what Joost can do to build some more traction, including getting more content from Hulu, building a Web version and putting Joost on the Wii. Andrew Baron of Rocketboom says that Joost was doomed from the start, for a variety of reasons. And ParisLemon — a longtime fan — has some thoughts about Joost as well.

I actually subscribe to the Joost blog. They add tons of content on a near-daily basis. Most of it is nominally interesting (most of it should have been added at launch, most of it isn't yet on Hulu), but very few shows have much geek cred (at least that I've seen), or if they have it, they haven't come out on slow news days.

That said, I'm not a Joost user. I'd love to be, because I much prefer a standalone utility I could run on a box made for my TV than something in a web page. Unfortunately, I can't cheaply make a box that fits the dumb system requirements of Joost. Even my brand spankin' new Dell laptop is lacking something minor in the graphics card department preventing Joost from running properly.

As a fan of Joost since the get go I fear you may be right – they've simply failed to garner much buzz beyond their initial pre-launch hype (which as you well know was considerable). If only they could find a way onto a device like the Apple TV…

Making it on to a living-room appliance would certainly help. Maybe that slingbox of tricks? I can't say if it would work as I've never used slingbox.

It seems no marketing has been done since launch – which directly contrasts with the owner's other (previous) child, Skype. Here in the UK, I always see “mainstream users” knowing what Skype is, and mostly using it. That hasn't happened with Joost – maybe because of that lack of partnerships.

I met Dirk-Willem van Gulik once and saw him speak at a conference on another occasion, You know he is also President of the Apache (server) foundation. His knowledge and intelligence is really impressive. I think we will all snigger at Joost for losing a guy like this. I bet that the guys over at the BBC cannot believe their luck. If I was Joost I'd cut my losses and die real soon. Joost does not need a box, neither does YouTube. YouTube has content… and Joost?

I just read this post and fired up Joost to see if they got any new content recently. The program tried to upgrade itself and then relaunched. Then it said the upgrade server was down and I should try to download the program manually. I don't have time for this right now.

Meanwhile, today I was thinking about stopping by the Apple Store and picking up an Apple TV.

I got an invite to the Joost beta, downloaded the software, and then did nothing with it. Not sure why other than I get my video elsewhere. I do think, however, that the on-demand, online video market will gain more traction. The question is whether Joost will be around to be part of the action.

[…] Mathew Ingram and MG Siegler are wondering today if internet TV provider Joost has much of a future. From MG: Well if they’re anything like me, I open it once in a while to see if anything new has been added, maybe watch a few clips, then shut it down 15 minutes later. I love the software, love the usability, but – as Mathew indicates – the content is simply not where it needs to be in order to get people to open up an entire program just to watch. […]

I just read this post and fired up Joost to see if they got any new content recently. The program tried to upgrade itself and then relaunched. Then it said the upgrade server was down and I should try to download the program manually. I don't have time for this right now.

Meanwhile, today I was thinking about stopping by the Apple Store and picking up an Apple TV.

Thanks, Mark — to be fair, I haven't kept up with Joost's blog, so maybethere's more going on there than I'm giving them credit for. But it doessort of feel as though they have lost some momentum. I wondered even in thebeginning whether a dedicated TV-style app was the way to go, and I'mwondering it even more now.

Thanks for the comment, Matt. Maybe getting onto Apple TV or the Wii orsomething like that might help, but I'm still not convinced. I have to sayI'm starting to wonder whether Joost isn't a solution in search of aproblem.

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I'm a Toronto-based writer, and this is where I write about online media, technology and other interesting things I come across on the Web. I am a former senior writer at Gigaom, a former blogger, columnist, reporter and social-media editor at the Globe and Mail and a former writer with the Financial Times of Canada.